This week certainly went by fast. Thanks everyone for making my week of being GotW a very fun and interesting one!

Biggest fun and pleasure, however, is to nominate a new Geek of the Week. And despite this line probably being the most used in this Forum, I was surprised to see that he has not been nominated GotW before. It is my pleasure to introduce fellow Geek Jeff,

JeffyJeff should need no introduction as he brought to us the awesome OLWLG. This tool upped all our mathtrades to a new level, leading to more and more of these great trades taking playce nowadays. But let the man introduce himself:

JeffyJeff wrote:

Firstly I'd like to give a big thanks to Arne Hoffmann for nominating me! The hardest part is going to be to narrow down my list of possible successors to one as there are so many more worthy than myself!

Since this is BGG then talking about my gaming background should be next. I grew up playing the traditional American board and card games. Monopoly, Sorry!, and the family favorite Pachisi that my grandmother always wanted to play. Speaking of my grandmother it's in her honor that my favorite player color to be is yellow. For card games Bid Whist, Nine (3 player Whist), and Poker. Sadly I didn't learn about Euro style board games until around 2001 and I was already in my 30's, not even the now classic Acquire

I've also have never really been a console "gamer" or a computer based gamer. The closest I've been is I did (and still have) a TI-99/4a on which I played a few games of Space Invaders. Prior to that in Jr. High on rare occasions we were allowed to shut down the Edusystem-20 operating system and boot up OS/8 (on the school's PDP-8/e) and play Adventure and Hunt the Wumpus. On a geeky side note around the holidays we also booted up OS/8 to run some programs which produced music (no sound cards!) that could be picked up by an AM radio and then broadcast over the school's PA system.

And while I never was much of a computer based gamer as a college freshman I did actually write a multi-user graphical (on ascii video terminals) cave exploration/kill monsters on the school's DECsystem-10 mainframe. It was written in Fortran-66 (even though this was the 80's we didn't have a 77 compiler!) and Macro-10. And while I named it Melee after the micro-game one of my room mate's had it was nothing like it. After I entered the working world I started to re-implement it as a network distributed game but never got farther than the basic framework and as such ended my hobby as a computer game designer.

So how did I get into board game's, the type we now all know and love? Around 2001 while I was running a social organization one of our members came across Border's Bookstore sponsored game nights in their cafe on Monday nights so we put it on our group's calendar. It wasn't long before I started sponsoring it myself every Monday night even when Border's wasn't. However the games any of us who attended knew were the standard American fare, trivia games, balderdash, etc. One week I ran into someone who I knew on-line my old companies internal network and he introduced us to Euro's! I do remind him periodically and to thank him which I will now publicly do... Thank You...

Now that I'm sure I've bored any reader who has made it this far, the reason I'm told I've been nominated... I'm sure some of you are surprised but it was not for being on the "hot deals" forum geek police squad , but for my contribution to the BGG sub-culture known as Math Trades. My contribution is the OLWLG which stands for "On-Line Want List Generator" which if I didn't develop someone else would have as necessity is the mother of invention. In my case I don't know how many math trades I had participated in when I found it to be a tedious chore to compose my want lists in the proper format. In addition several math trades had problems (folks trading their games for games they didn't think were on their want lists) show up after the results were posted due to this tedious nature and other quirks from composing one's want lists by hand. Over time I've incrementally added features which has made it easier for someone to not only participate in a math trade, but to run one so now it seems there are always at least half a dozen math trades running around the world (as of this writing there are a dozen). Hope this isn't as boring as it sounds to me trying to proof read it!

Jeff, this is not boring at all. Quite the contrary, your early years of computer programming sound quite fascinating to me. Let me get a couple questions out to you.

1) Which approach did your cave exploration/kill monsters game follow? A determinstic, pre-defined path or more a random nature? Did your monsters have AI? Could the game be won or did you play until you died?2) You have no 10-rated game. Why? What criteria would a game need to fulfill to receive top marks from you?3) What happens if you cannot play yellow?4) The first Euros that Eric introduced you to were?5) What was your most memorable (good or bad) gaming experience?6) Do you have a motto in life? A motto in gaming?7) I understand that each trade set up in the OLWLG still needs manual input on your side. How much time do the trades take up each week for you? Do you plan on further automating this process?8) What was your trade that other useres would think most lopsided?9) What would be a fitting 1000th game in your collection? 10) What advice would you give a new geek regarding trading on BGG?

So much for now. Enjoy your week - your contribution to BGG is most valuable and you have earned every ounce of the GotW!

नमस्ते (Namaste) – I honor the place in you in which the entire universe dwells. I honor the place in you which is of love, of truth, of light and of peace. When you are in that place in you and I am in that place in me, we are one.

Congrats Jeff!

It's about time you got chosen

Sunrise or sunset? Lake or ocean? Your all time favourite board game? Is there any board game you truly dislike? What was the last game you bought? What will be next one to buy? What was the last game your traded away? What did you trade it for? What colour do you like to play? If you would have to pick just one artist / band and never listen to anything else, which one would you pick and why? Are those your cats in your avatar?

Anyone who has ever participated in any Math Trade, would have seen your avatar. It is so nice to actually get to learn more of you. Hope you have fun and enjoy your week, truly deserved

All reality is a game. Physics at its most fundamental, the very fabric of our universe, results directly from the interaction of certain fairly simple rules, and chance; the same description may be applied to the best, most elegant and both intellec

and aesthetically satisfying games. By being unknowable, by resulting from events which, at the sub-atomic level, cannot be fully predicted, the future remains malleable, and retains the possibility of change, the hope of coming to prevail; victory.

Congratulations JJ! You have changed math trading (and trading) forever. Your (admittedly repetitive ) submission confirmation geekmails always bring the hope of new games to play. I have discovered some gems and obtained some grails only because of your continued commitment.

So, why is Money! your highest rated game?Is it also your most played game?Do you currently have a black cat (what is it's name)?What's there to do in Windham Mas?A lot of contests you've entered, win any?

A few war-ish games, tons of Euros and assorted boardgames. You seem to be a pretty solid boardgame fan, not too many distractions from your chosen genre.

Okay, have a seat and we'll get started.

You don't seem to have a problem with combat or battle oriented games; is there any reason there aren't more wargames in your collection? Your claim to fame is your OLWLG math trades app. What was the main reason you decided to be the one to write it? Do you participate in many math trades these days? What is the greatest appeal of the math trades, from your experience? The size of your collection belies a common trait of many board gamers. What is the main reason why your collection is so large? What is your primary motivation for acquiring a new game? How often do the older games (outside of your top 10) see time on the gaming table? On average how many plays does it take for the 'shine' to wear off of a new game? What makes your top games special to you? When is it time for a game to go into the Trade bin? Thank you for your time, is there anything you'd like to add?